


Strange Loop

by Anonymous



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Gen, soul room strange loops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 14:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2854769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuugi solves the Puzzle, but before his wish can be granted he must first pass through the mind of the long-dead king, who is fighting some battles of his own. (Season zero canon divergence. Cryptic, or maybe just trippy.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Loop

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the commenter on one of my vids who pointed out that Yami’s soul room looks like an Escher painting (I don't know if you are okay with being named). This is for you.
> 
> Um. Bad maths. Not very coherent, but neither is Escher. The concept of the prison is from the Koch snowflake. Also influenced by the book _Godel, Escher, Bach_ , which I like very much but do not understand.

 

 

 

* * *

 

_"The word “love” cannot, thus, be separated from the word “I”; the more deeply rooted the symbol for someone inside you, the greater the love, the brighter the light that remains behind.”_

—Douglas Hofstadter,  _I Am A Strange Loop_

 

* * *

 

**(Season 0.)**

 

Yuugi does not dream often, but these days as he drifts into sleep he finds himself falling, down and down and down in an inward spiral past an infinitude of stone-wall grey, doors in the ceilings and staircases suspended upside down and sideways. The sound of footsteps, echoing against cold stone down the infinite fractal halls, rooms that contain themselves and the penrose paths that rise and fall and do not end.

Cards fly through the air: the Dark Magician and Polymerization, the Tower and the Hierophant, the nine of hearts and the queen of spades. That morning Yuugi wakes to dirt under his shoes and dried blood on his hands, and for the first time in a long time, he feels fear.

 

* * *

 

_A long, long time ago in the place far to the west where the sun makes its resting place, there was a kingdom of light and sand. In that kingdom there was a silver citadel, and in the heart of that city, there was a palace, built of stone and lined with gold._

 

* * *

 

The twisting hallway is lined on one side with mirrors, on the other with game boards of every kind, and Yuugi runs with the fingers of his right hand intertwined with those of his reflection.

A wall looms up before him, bearing a half-finished game of noughts and crosses. Yuugi studies the layout for a second, then with trepidation reaches up and scratches a large X in the top right hand corner, playing to win.

The game board fades to a shiny surface, which Yuugi thinks is a mirror until his reflection _smiles_ _at him_ and he has to lift a hand to his own face to be sure that his body is still his own. The reflection does not follow suit. “You are not a dark thing, then?”

Yuugi blinks. “… What?”

“Dark things do not win against the stratagems of the Game King-- no matter, no matter— here are the rules: you have won, so I will give you a choice of truths: what, who, when, where, how, or why? You have already chosen, and the answer is—“

“—Wait, that’s not fair—“

“—don’t shoot the messenger,” the other Yuugi replies good-naturedly. “This place is the memory palace of the Game King.” A far-off sound of thunder. “Now run, for the dark things will soon arrive, and I will see you at the place where two suns and a moon are together in the sky.”

The other Yuugi reaches out a hand and the mirror shatters, taking him with it.

Yuugi looks down at the silver splinters littering the ground at his feet and a thousand violet eyes blink back at him, no more or less than his own reflection. Then there is the creak of stone close behind and Yuugi takes off into the dark, flying footsteps echoing against the howling of ghosts as the labyrinth moves around him.

 

* * *

 

 _In that palace lived a prince who was very, very good at games._ _The prince had the mind of a gambler and the heart of a king, and beneath the quicksilver of his thoughts_ _the minds of his opponents were clear like water._

 

* * *

 

A room here, a room there, sarcophagi upturned and traps triggered by someone who has passed through this place before. Yuugi studies them all, the tripwires and the false-floors, moves the broken stone-pieces about the ruined game boards caked with dirt and blood and wonders what battles had transpired here.

He follows a waterfall that runs uphill and discovers, some hours later, the waterwheel into which he had etched the letters of his name to mark the path already taken. In some faraway distance the snick of a pocketknife through the air, a sound of breaking flesh, a scent of copper, a cry of pain. His own face, reflected in the surface of dark water, wearing a cruel expression he does not recognise.

 

* * *

 

_The kingdom prospered with trade and life, but there are many dark things in the hearts of men, and it is out of this that the sun-shadow began to grow in the heart of the white and shining city. The king, seeing the shadow that would consume his kingdom, gave his life to perform the forbidden ritual: the blood sacrifice was made, but the darkness was not destroyed, only bound for a time._

_“I will build a prison,” the prince said, looking over the ruins of his kingdom as it burned, “to keep the darkness in.”_

 

* * *

 

On the threshold of the door marked with the kanji for ‘tomorrow’ Yuugi steps carefully over the tripwire trap and approaches the mirror against the room’s far wall. His reflection smiles in greeting again but this time the other Yuugi seems different somehow, posture prouder, eyes sharper with a glint of something not quite kind. A 4x4 game of checkers is set up on the stone slab in the middle of the room.

“Blitz rules, ten seconds to a move. The wager is one answer for every capture. Do you accept?” Its voice is pitched low in challenge. A countdown. “Ten. Nine. Eight.”

Yuugi nods and quickly takes the black. Game start.

The earlygame proceeds in silence save for the sound of stone sliding against stone, and Yuugi realises with trepidation that he has not set the terms for the capture of his own pieces.

Jump. Point to Yuugi. “What are the dark things?”

“The enemies of the Game King that is prisoned in this place. Every day, he fights them, and every day, he wins.” Jump. Point to the-other-Yuugi. “What is your name?”

“Mutou Yuugi.” Jump. “Why am I here?”

“You solved the Puzzle that should never be solved.” Move.

Jump. “What did you wish for?”

“Friends who would never betray me.” Jump, and jump. “What am I supposed to do?”

“If you are asking about the win state of the game, there is none. You should not be here. Next question.” Yuugi remains silent-- he can’t think of anything. “Ten. Nine. Eight.”

“… What if I lose?”

“Don’t.” The reflection considers for a long dark moment, then moves to corner his last piece.

Jump. “What will you give up to get your wish?”

“…” _That wasn’t part of the bargain._

A sound of thunder in the distance, and the-other-Yuugi does not wait for an answer. “The clocks change, the dark things come, I will be at the place where humankind’s king waits. Now go.”

The mirror shatters into a thousand prisms that paint the stone the colours of light. Yuugi waits a long moment, but the howling of wind does not come closer, the stone does not shift beneath his feet. The infinite darkness of the corridor beyond leaves him a sudden feeling of emptiness.

 

* * *

 

_How does one contain a thing that does not stop growing?_

_The mathematician’s snowflake, said the prince, bounds a finite area within an infinite perimeter. Every day, you grow the prison walls. Every day, the dark things gain a little ground. But every day, until it is defeated, it stays confined._

__Every day he must build new rooms, new halls, new traps, new games. He must wager his life against the dark every day for an eternity, and he must always, always win._ _

 

* * *

 

Stone cold beneath shaking hands. Yuugi looks into a door and sees himself looking through a door, looking through a door, looking through a door and on and on into infinity. One can build Moebius paths and Klein bottles and stairways that ascend and ascend and never go anywhere.

The pictographs writhe like snakes before his eyes. They tell a story, he is sure, but one cannot understand what one does not recognise. Where are the dark things in this place? He has never encountered anything but his own reflections.

 

* * *

 

_The high priests believed it without question, because the king was very, very good at games. So the king opened up his memory palace, built in the image of his beloved city, and sealed the darkness in._

 

* * *

 

“I can’t tell you unless we play,” other-Yuugi says, beyond the door marked with the kanji for ‘complete’. “Pick a game, any game, one you know you can win.”

So they play, and Yuugi wins, and his reflection breathes a sigh of relief.

“Who built this place?”

“A king,” the spirit replies, “who loved games. But then there came a darkness that threatened his beloved kingdom. Mazes have always been used to keep things locked away. So he made his memory palace into a labyrinth, and locked the darkness in."

“Mercy is weakness and weakness is death. The king ripped his heart in two before he sealed himself away. Now there is only justice.”

“It makes no sense,” Yuugi says, looking up at the well in the floor that should be the sky.

“That’s the point,” Yami says. “Nothing about this place makes sense, so the darkness can’t figure out how to navigate it. The downside being—neither can we. Now, run. I will be at the place where the earth meets the sky…”

“No, stay,” Yuugi says, and reaches out toward the mirror, but the reflection draws away in shock—

 _relevance is relative_ who are you mou hitori no _the king made a mistake when he made us play his games for him_ who is the Game King? _Oh no no omote no you have to go you have to run oh no no no omote no—_

Kaleidoscope of mirrors splintering and splintering light. A hand, which draws a hand, which draws the first. Your anger feeds my despair, my pain feeds your hate and the sunflower-heart spiral turns downward and inward and will never, never end. _The dark mirrors the dark builds the dark feeds the dark you bind the dark in a labyrinth you bind yourself you fight yourself the asymptotic approach stalemates stalemates mazerunning on end mirrors in reflection you are_

 

_you are_

 

闇

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Get out,” Yuugi wakes screaming, “of my head—“

 

* * *

  

_A new riddle for every day that passes in this place. A trap for a bad memory becomes a new code to break._

_Over and over again the darkness was defeated, but not destroyed.The king played his games until the silver of the citadel grew gray and tarnished with blood, and the memory palace grew and twisted into a labyrinth even he did not know how to navigate. He played and won and drew and lost until the fragments of his soul roam the mirrors in the many rooms where he had died. He forgot the sunlight that had lain upon the place of his birth, and he even forgot his own name._

_But he plays the shadow games, still. Until he leaves the game, the darkness cannot be destroyed, and until the darkness is destroyed, he cannot leave._

 

* * *

 

In the dreamscape of nothingness that extends infinitely in all directions, one might naturally choose to build outward, to create kingdoms and landscapes that spanned oceans and continents.

But the Game King chose to build inward instead. Rooms contain rooms, which contain rooms, which contain themselves. The waterfall at the heart of the labyrinth rises six steps and the rushing water falls, falls, to begin again. Run due east, and east, and east, and east. Mirrors and mirrors. The chess games that always end in stalemate. The desert, the citadel, the village, the sea. And at the heart of it all the Game King whom he has never seen.

The Schwartzchild dragon consumes itself from the outside in, and again, and again, and again. Around him the memory palace shifts like clockwork or the interior of a Rubik’s Cube. The cards are the key. The game is the way. 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_What the king does not see is that he has already lost. He lost the game the day he sealed the doors._

 

 

* * *

 

The King sits throned before him, face wreathed in shadows.

 “You can win, but you can’t leave. Not until you solve the puzzle.”

 “I already have.”

Yuugi raises the Puzzle to the wall and where the surface of smooth gold touches cold stone, silver blossoms like blood on the edge of a knife.

 

 

 "..."

 

 

In every recursive loop, there must be a base case. Beneath every tangled hierarchy there is a level that lies inviolate.

You, who were my opponent.

You, who warned me first.

You, who showed me the way.

You, who told me everything you knew. Everything you remembered. But none of it was true.

You, and you, and you, and you.

 

 

 

Look, Yuugi says, and throws open the gates of light.

Where the sun touches, it paints the mirrors of the room with gold. Each surface reflects another, which reflects another, which reflects the first, and in a thousand thousand reflections the bone-dead room expands and stretches outward in all directions forevermore.

Beneath the sunlight, the shadow-throne crumbles like dust.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

The room is quiet, like the night; there is no more wind that echoes against hollow and broken stone. On the bedside table where the Puzzle lies, the cracks in the gold slowly splinter closed. The Puzzle – the Pyramid, now – is cold, like unbroken skin atop an unbeating heart.

Yuugi shudders awake, this time in silence. He breathes in. He opens his eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The basic plot is this:
> 
> Everything up to the creation of the Millennium Items stays the same.
> 
> The prince has one hell of a plan, but he made a couple of mistakes. Firstly, it is plausible that you can spend an eternity playing board games in your head, but you are pretty much guaranteed to go insane. Secondly, the darkness never really existed, and what he has been fighting all along is his own shadows. That is why he could never win, and that is why Yuugi can burn the entire thing down by letting light back in.
> 
> Yuugi is the half of the king’s soul that he threw out when he sealed himself in and which was left to reincarnate (a bit confusing but this is commonly accepted fanon, I think), which is how he can access the puzzle. The Yamis they think that they are created to mirror whatever they come across (sort of a strategic shortcut), but they are wrong about that. They look like Yuugi because they sort of are him.
> 
> Also, metaphysical space is weird.
> 
> Feedback is appreciated! Even if it's just 'wtf'.


End file.
